ORGANIZATION OF AMERICAN STATES Inter-American Council for Integral Development (CIDI)
SEVENTH INTER-AMERICAN MEETING OF MINISTERS OEA/Ser.K/XXVII.7 OF CULTURE AND HIGHEST APPROPRIATE AUTHORITIES CIDI/REMIC-VII/ INF.2/16 November 17 and 18, 2016 16 November 2016 Asuncion, Paraguay Original: English
“EXPANDING THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC POTENTIAL OF CULTURAL HERITAGE IN THE CARIBBEAN”: PHASE II – IMPLEMENTATION OF PROJECT COMPONENTS
(Prepared by the Culture and Tourism Section of the Department of Economic Development) 2
“EXPANDING THE SOCIO-ECONOMIC POTENTIAL OF CULTURAL HERITAGE IN THE CARIBBEAN”: PHASE II – IMPLEMENTATION OF PROJECT COMPONENTS
BACKGROUND
Phase I For many years, requests had been made to the OAS Inter-American Committee on Culture for assistance to CARICOM countries in the development of the social and economic potential of their Cultural Heritage. These requests were finally answered, and the Permanent Mission of the United States to the OAS agreed to fund a Project for the Caribbean. And so, in 2013, the first phase of this Project was undertaken. With the assistance of key organizations and individuals in the region, a Needs Assessment was carried out to identify and to prioritize what the region considered to be its needs in this regard.
Based on the results and recommendations of Phase I, the outputs of the Project were conceptualized to lay the foundation for sustainable capacity building of participating countries and to increase the socio-economic opportunities of Cultural Heritage in the Caribbean region.
Phase 2 The primary purpose of the current, or second phase, is to strengthen the capacity of participating CARICOM countries in the preservation, development, and use of Cultural Heritage resources with local community participation in the following aspects:
legislation and fiscal policy
monitoring
planning and evaluation
sustainable Tourism, and
Education and professional development.
This Project is managed by the Culture and Tourism Section of the Department of Economic Development of the OAS and the private consulting firm Coherit Associates LLC.
BENEFICIARY COUNTRIES 3
The participating countries in the Project are:
. Antigua and Barbuda
. The Bahamas
. Barbados
. Belize
. Dominica
. Grenada (and Carriacou)
. Guyana
. Haiti (participating as an Observer)
. Jamaica
. Saint Kitts and Nevis
. Saint Lucia
. Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
. Suriname
. Trinidad and Tobago
PROJECT OUTPUTS
Five main outputs are highlighted in this Project:
1) The establishment of a Caribbean Heritage Network to provide a medium of communication through which professionals, communities, and organizations will have a more official and permanent framework for mutual support and for sharing their particular skills and resources in complementary ways. This is being coordinated by the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus.
Earlier this year, the Board of the Faculty of Humanities and Education of The University of the West Indies Cave Hill Campus agreed to the establishment of the Caribbean Heritage Network (CHN) and a Secretariat for the Network within the Department of 4
History and Philosophy. The Faculty also approved the Governance Document for the Network (incorporating the Sustainability Plan).
What the Network can offer promises to be incredible and very exciting. It is a very comprehensive website, providing facilities the region has never before enjoyed. It is anticipated that it will be launched officially early in 2017.
The CHN is available online at https://caribheritage.org/
2) The defining of a Regional Standard for Evaluating and Improving Protective Heritage Legislation and Related Financial Incentive Policies and Laws, to provide an instrument to improve legislation for heritage protection in all countries. This is being coordinated jointly by a team of three international legal experts and five regional expert advisors from Suriname, Guyana, Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago and the Faculty of Law of The University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus.
In the initial Needs Assessment, it was noted by the regional stakeholders that there was wide disparity in the existence, awareness, and effectiveness of Heritage legislation across the region. Moreover, effective Heritage legislation seemed not to be a high priority among policy makers and the general public, mainly because of a lack of awareness of the potential contribution of Cultural Heritage to economic and societal development. Fiscal incentive policies are among the most effective tools for the promotion of public awareness and participation, but such policies, it was felt, were underdeveloped or not widely understood or employed for Heritage protection in the region.
The goal of this output is therefore the development of model Heritage legislation that can be used throughout the region to evaluate national laws (including fiscal incentive policies), and to encourage the drafting of new legislation where none now exists.
3) The development of a Regional Model for Establishing National Registers of Heritage Places - a process to be implemented through a host institution to test the register process in order to serve to develop and improve registers in the entire region. This will be coordinated by a team of regional and international experts in the relevant fields. Host institution is the St. Christopher National Trust of St. Kitts and Nevis. 5
The basic building block and the indispensable foundation for the protection of heritage places is the development of inventories that may eventually lead to an official National Register of places protected by law. Without such an inventory, knowing what places merit protection or how they can be used to enhance the socio-economic benefits of the communities, is impossible.
It was found that the majority of countries participating in this project lacked heritage inventories, and where they did exist, they were deficient. It was also found that those Heritage places which were considered worthy of protection, were relics of a colonial past. There were no instances in which communities had been given the opportunity to identify places and structures that were in their estimation, worthy of protection as Heritage places.
It is for this reason that the establishment of effective and permanent inventory and register programs that rely on the identification of heritage places, through the involvement of communities, was considered a high priority for this project. Out of the six countries with no official heritage inventories, St Kitts and Nevis was selected to receive technical and capacity building assistance in establishing a National Register program within the St Christopher National Trust, the entity legally identified to carry out this duty in St Kitts.
Arches, an open-source, geospatially-enabled software platform for Cultural Heritage inventory and management, developed jointly by the Getty Conservation Institute and the World Monuments Fund, is being used for the development of regional National Registers. It has been installed at the St. Christopher National Trust. Training sessions over the past year have shown St. Kitts and some other Observer countries (Antigua and Barbuda, Barbados, Dominica, Grenada, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines), how to adapt Arches to suit the specific needs of their respective countries.
4) The establishment of a regional Model for Engaging the Public in Sustainable Heritage Tourism and the development of a Sustainable Heritage Tourism Endorsement Program, utilizing methodologies successfully implemented in the environmental and geo-tourism fields, combined with mutual mentoring of young entrepreneurs and traditional practitioners to offer sustainable economic and conservation 6
benefits that can be shared among multiple stakeholders. Host institution is the Grenada National Trust – implemented in the parish of St. George.
The Endorsement Program seeks to address four of the major challenges to the realization and sharing of equitable and lasting benefits to the people of the region from their cultural heritage resources. These challenges are:
a) the concentration of Tourism in resorts and densely settled areas, bypassing the landmarks and culture of rural areas and large segments of the population; b) the production of “generic” souvenirs and performances that do not adequately or respectfully represent the diversity of local crafts, foods, artistic expression, and local knowledge, and often rely on imported, mass-produced products and or a few standardized excursions; c) the restricted access to the Tourism market for local practitioners, small businesses, and marginalized communities; d) the loss of local skills and traditions due to insufficient financial returns and a consequent failure of inter-generational transmission.
This component will address these challenges by focusing on the endorsement and promotion of local entrepreneurship in authentic, high-quality heritage-related products and services among communities that now receive few direct benefits from the regional Tourism industry.
The achievements to date include:
a) the establishment of a multi-sector task force by the Grenada National Trust to oversee and administer the endorsement programme, which will identify and certify the quality of endorsed products and services, as distinctive and authentic expressions of Grenadian culture.
b) the compilation of a detailed baseline assessment of current tourism demand and tourism services supplied in Grenada; a survey of tangible and intangible heritage resources, as well as an assessment of their public accessibility and potential for public interpretation and/or marketability.
c) an extensive elicitation from individuals and community groups of representative Grenadian heritage values and attitudes, through participatory ethnographic activities. The initial value perceptions of the participants were refined by subsequent community focus groups and all 7
of the visual and audio material has been qualitatively analyzed to identify common values and themes.
d) the draft endorsement criteria, scorecard, and business and marketing plans were developed by the GNT task force in collaboration with local and international experts in sustainable certification programs and business development.
e) the appointment of ten Business Mentors, who will be responsible for identifying capacity-building needs among applicant businesses and assisting those businesses through the draft endorsement application process.
f) approval of ten businesses for participation and to be mentored. They include 2 rum-making factories, two Museums, two chocolate factories and an art gallery.
5) Curricular Enhancement of Heritage Education - to identify, in collaboration with a panel of regional academic advisors, existing heritage programs and courses in the region, evaluate the main gaps in curricula, and the provision of two online courses in Heritage to fill existing curricular gaps. The Open Campus of the University of the West Indies will offer two online Heritage Courses:
Museum Conservation Skills
Values-based Heritage Site Management.
The OAS has entered into a Memorandum of Understanding with the Open Campus and the courses will be offered in the January, 2017 semester. The OAS will offer 50 scholarships (75% of the total tuition fee)
FUTURE SCOPE OF THE PROJECT
So far, the OAS has been carrying out the implementation of the Project components with specific countries. With the exception of Outputs 1 and 5, models/ templates will be produced and will eventually be shared with all Member States for implementation.
It is proposed to hold a major presentation of the achievement of the project to date early in 2017, so that all countries will be given an opportunity to see what the ways in which the Project can contribute to the development of regional economies and to the strengthening of identities. 8
As the countries of CARICOM focus increasingly on the development of the Cultural and Creative Industries, this project has the potential to have a significant impact in this regard.
CONTACT INFORMATION
CELIA TOPPIN Project Manager (Cultural Heritage) Culture & Tourism Section Department of Economic Development Executive Secretariat for Integral Development Organization of American States 1889 F Street N.W., Washington, D.C. 20006 T. (202) 370-4619 F: (202) 458-3190 [email protected] www.oas.org
EFFY GOMEZ Project Assistant Culture & Tourism Section Department of Economic Development Executive Secretariat for Integral Development Organization of American States 1889 F Street N.W., Washington, D.C. 20006 T. (202) 370-4562 F: (202) 458-3190 [email protected]
PROJECT WEBSITE www.caribheritage.org
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